A course for people done renting their business

Own the stack your business runs on.

Most small businesses run on five different companies' servers — accounting here, bookings there, email somewhere else. You hold none of the keys. There's another way: one stack, on hardware you control, built with the same AI tools the pros use.

Join the waitlist → See what you'd learn

Built in public. This site runs on the exact stack the course teaches.

How you run things nowThe stack

Accounting their server

Bookings their server

Email / CRM their server

Client files their server

Automations their server

→

Your data

Your database

Your automations (n8n)

Claude Code

Your server (VPS)

Your domain

▸ one column — and you hold every key

What you'll actually build

Not theory. A working stack you own by the end.

Over the cohort you stand up each layer yourself — with Claude Code doing the heavy lifting and you making the calls. No prior coding.

LAYER 01

Your own server

A VPS you rent for the price of a couple of coffees a month — your office in the cloud, keys in your hand.

LAYER 02

Domain & the plumbing

DNS, HTTPS, the boring bits that make it real — demystified, done once, understood for good.

LAYER 03

Claude Code as your builder

The AI that writes, fixes and runs the software — working right on your server, in plain English.

LAYER 04

Automations with n8n

The repetitive jobs — invoices, follow-ups, reports — running themselves, on your stack, not a subscription.

LAYER 05

Your database & backups

Your customer data in one place you control — and a backup habit so "own it" never means "lose it".

LAYER 06

The Seven Plays

The handful of moves that replace most of what you pay SaaS for — the judgement, not just the buttons.

Let's be honest

No six figures in six weeks. Just the boring infrastructure that compounds.

✓

Real build logs — including the things that broke and what they cost.

✓

You keep your data, onshore, under your own login.

✓

Skills that stay yours — not a tool you rent until the price goes up.

✗

No "AI will make you rich" hype. This is plumbing — and plumbing is powerful.

✗

No guru funnel. One honest course, priced like one.

✗

No lock-in. If you leave, you take the whole stack with you.

Who it's for

Small operators who are done being tenants.

The $20k/yr SaaS bill

You add up the subscriptions one day and realise you're renting your whole business.

Capable, not a coder

You run things, you're not afraid of a bit of setup, but you've never wanted to "learn to code".

Values ownership

Your data, your keys, your call — you'd rather hold the thing than rent access to it.

Founding cohort — early & discounted

Join the waitlist.

Get the build logs as they happen, first pick of the founding cohort, and the founding price. Two questions below help shape the course around what you actually need — both optional.

Email // required

First name // optional

What do you run? // optional

Biggest system headache right now? // optional

If it were right for you, what feels fair to pay? // optional

// you'll get one email to confirm — that's the double opt-in

Check your inbox 📬

We've sent one email to confirm it's really you. Click the link inside and you're on the list — that's it. (If it's not there in a minute, have a quick look in spam.)

Who's behind it

I'm Mark. I run a real business, and I got tired of paying five companies to hold my own data. So I rebuilt it on a stack I own — and it turns out the tools to do that are finally within reach for people who aren't developers. I'm building this course in public, on that same stack, and showing the whole thing: what works, what breaks, what it costs.

Mark Mandeno — building in public